This Day in Music History — November 17

1974 : ABBA play their first gig outside Sweden, opening at the Kalkonerteater in Copenhagen on their first European tour.

1978 : During Bob Dylan’s show at the San Diego Sports Arena, an audience member throws a silver Christian cross onstage, which the singer picks up and pockets. Perhaps coincidentally, Dylan enters his “Christian period” the next year.

2000 : Cher makes her first appearance on NBC-TV’s sitcom Will and Grace, in the episode “Gypsies, Tramps and Weed.”

2003 : After collapsing on stage during a concert in London, Meat Loaf is rushed to a nearby hospital with what a publicist terms “exhaustion due to a prolonged viral infection” but what is actually an irregular heartbeat requiring emergency surgery.